RE: Blockbusting news, results get worse

Mudama, Eric
2003-10-26T22:12:06Z

Andre Hedrick wrote:
> Eric,
>
> Item "3" in your list is not practical, because no drive
> maker allows the same drives that large oem's purchase to be placed in
retail.
> There are obvious reasons, but your position stated for the average joe
> consumer is flawed.

I don't believe your statement is correct that OEM drives and retail drives
always differ. They may have slight configuration differences, but
fundamentally I think they're the same drive with identical or
near-identical firmware.

> Why don't you guys offer extended warrenty purchase service contracts?

As an optional feature on any drive? Not sure, it would be nice. However,
maintaining it specifically for individual drives in a product line might be
more work than someone high up feels is worth it. Maybe there's a market
for buying a $30 warranty add-on from Maxtor that buys you an extra year or
whatever, however, I think you can get the same thing from CompUSA or other
companies now if you want it. For them it is profitable, and I don't think
we'd want to compete with our virtual sales force. (The retail shops)

I do know you get better warranties on the more expensive models though, but
obviously that doesn't help after-the-fact.

--eric